Innocent until proven... well rested?
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It has finally been proven that innocent individuals who suffer from insomnia are more likely to admit to guilt.
According to research, those who suffer from lack of sleep are more likely to falsely admit to guilt than those who are well rested.
The University of Michigan found that odds of participants signing false confessions who had not slept for an entire day (24 hours) where 4 and a half times higher than those who had a solid 8 hours of sleep.
For many years, human rights activists and psychologists have debated the impact of which sleep has on health and recall; finally there is something to prove it.
"This is the first direct evidence that sleep deprivation increases the likelihood that a person will falsely confess to wrongdoing that never occurred," said Dr Kimberly Fenn, professor of psychology at Michigan State.
"It's a crucial first step toward understanding the role of sleep deprivation in false confessions and, in turn, raises complex questions about the use of sleep deprivation in the interrogation of innocent and guilty suspects."
The experiment involved 88 individuals completing various computer activities, and a psychological test over a weekend long period at the Fenns Sleep and learning Lab.
Participants were given quite a few warnings to NOT hit the "escape" key because "this could cause the computer to lose valuable data." They were then observed during the tasks.
The following a.m., each member was shown a report covering his or her activities and falsely claiming they had hit the escape key.
Half the participants where then allowed to have an 8 our sleep, while the other half did not sleep on the last day of the experiment.
50% of the participants who did not sleep on the last day signed a false confession as compared to only 18% of the well-rested batch.
"A false admission of wrongdoing can have disastrous consequences in a legal system already fraught with miscarriages of justice," the authors conclude. "We are hopeful that our study is the first of many to uncover the sleep-related factors that influence processes related to false confession."
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